


Three Graves

by brawltogethernow



Series: 50 things to do after your first interdimensional jaunt [1]
Category: Marvel, Marvel 616, Spider-Man (Comicverse), Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Friendship, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Gwen (Tentatively) Embraces Friendship, Interdimensional Support Group, Miles Morales is Spider-Man, Old Married Couple, Peter B. Gets It Together, Pre-Slash, conversely i won't testify that petergwenmj has 0 star-crossed romantic vibes, everything tagged as a ship can be read as platonic, not exactly angst with a happy ending more like meditative loss with an optimistic resolution
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-22
Updated: 2019-06-22
Packaged: 2020-05-16 08:32:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,893
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19314484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brawltogethernow/pseuds/brawltogethernow
Summary: Three visits in three dimensions to three cemeteries, and three heroes keeping on.





	Three Graves

**Author's Note:**

> My brain: AUs where people come back from the dead!  
> My fingers:

Peter gets cleaned up and settles his resolution to reach out to MJ before visiting Gwen. After all, you want to look your best for important people.

"'Cause you're worth it, Gwendy," he says, setting down a takeout cup of coffee the way she liked it against the base of her headstone and sinking to sit criss-crossed in front of it cradling his own. A weak shield against the New Year's cold.

It's been just warm enough just long enough to sweep the earth in the cemetery clean of the usual frozen-puddles-and-slush cocktail and uncover the winter-dormant grass. Just a reminder of the promise of the end of winter. But it's still not exactly picnic weather, so Peter's alone with the Stacy family.

"So I've been on kind of a jaunt," he says. "Helped me get my head in order. I know, I know, it's about time." He bows his head and shuts his eyes, and for a second he's one stone-still silhouette on the slight slope of hill with all the others.

Then he throws his head back and huffs, blinking up at the clear blue sky. "So I came to fill you in. I know you'd want to know."

He drags the heel of one hand across the corner of his eye. "After all, it's about you."

He puts his untouched coffee down too fast, then catches it with one spindly finger when it starts to overbalance and rights it. "I met these people, Gwen, and one of them... Let me start over. I've always been in this alone. Sorry, I shouldn't say things like that when I know you can't hit me. I know I had you. And the others. But this was -- this is different."

He takes a deep draft of the coffee. "Weirder, mostly."

 

_∩∩∩_

 

Gwen sits down in front of Peter's grave, folding into a tailor's seat in a graceful ballet movement.

"Hey," she says, and reaches out and knocks her knuckles against the headstone. A one-sided fist bump.

She folds the arm back against herself, tugging her hoodie sleeves over her hands, and sits there silently for a while, curled up in a hunch. The world is statue-hard and all-over glittery with frost, and steam curls up when she exhales. She's wearing most of her suit underneath exercise clothes, and the cold seems to bite harder where its insulation doesn't cover her at her face and hands.

She's out of practice talking to people, and Peter was always the one who would say something to get the conversation going anyway.

"I have had a _week_ ," she says at last. "You'd have liked it." She thinks of the older Peter, scowling and looking exasperated. "Okay, maybe you'd have hated it."

She sighs and touches the stone again, pressing her hand flat against it. It hurts, the rock hungrily leeching the warmth out of her body.

"I'm trying the whole friend thing again," she says. "I don't know what you would have -- I know neither of us ever really liked people, so maybe you wouldn't think I should. But you also seemed better at knowing what was best for me than what you needed for yourself, so maybe you would have thought it was a good idea. Because I'm pretty sure this is -- best. For me. That is." She snorts. "I was better at you than me, too."

She pulls her hand back and rubs it against her knee, trying to force warmth back into it. With her augmented metabolism, her whitened fingers flush hot again faster than they should. "I definitely still prefer problems you can solve with hitting something. Or by breaking and entering. ...That doesn't mean it's obvious I was going to have to let people in eventually, though! I was completely planning to never address my own feelings again. So take _that_." She points at Peter's name, taps it lightly between the R and the P with her fingertip, then pulls her arm close again, hugging it to herself. She sighs. "Maybe you'd think I was dumb for taking this long. I dunno. But Peter, the friend I made? I _know_ you would have liked him. Whether you wanted to or not."

 

_∩∩∩_

 

Footsteps appear in the deep slush in front of Peter Parker's headstone. After a moment, an eye-baffling haze above them shivers and resolves into a boy in a hoodie.

Miles hunches into his civvies against the cold and looks around, head sweeping back and forth. Once he's sure he's alone, he tips his face down to face the grave. He stands there a moment, neck bent, hands in his jacket pockets.

The tokens people left that he recognizes from the last time he was here are starting to look kind of battered and sad, but most of them have been cleared out and replaced by a crop of new ones. It's a mosaic of red and blue and webs, because even if it didn't occur to most of them until it was too late to say it, New York loved Spider-Man.

"Hey," Miles says. "I'm back."

He shifts his feet a little to try to get cold water to stop seeping into his shoes. This agitates some stealthy puddle and soaks them worse.

"Man," he says to the headstone. "I can _not_ stop myself from looking around when I try using my spidey sense to check for people on purpose. I mean, with my eyes." He tugs his hands out of his pockets to raise them up to his face and demonstrates with wiggly finger motions, one hand in front of his eyeballs and one beside his head. "Did _you_ get that? I know I don't _need_ to, but I just can't shake it. I mean -- _yet_. I can't shake it _yet_. This whole Spider-Man thing is kind of a process."

There were a few inches of white fluffy snow the other day, so within hours it was like a massive slushee had been upended in every shallow dip or half-protected corner in the city. With all the foot traffic this place gets, the ground here is like half-frozen mud soup.

"But you know that."

He holds out one hand, staring at the palm of his glove for inspiration. "So hey, uh. I know I was kind of weird when I was here last time?" He puts the hand on the back of his neck, eyes peeling upward sheepishly. "I recognize now that coming here in a party store version of your costume was a little weird. Nobody ever saw my face, though! So I guess it worked out like I wanted it to?"

A big shrug, hands windmilling. "You know, except the other Spiders. I figure that's okay, though. Man, I wish you could have met them."

His shoulders slump, and he feels his eyes prickling. He huffs a fortifying breath, fast in and out. "But anyway. You know how I said I didn't think I could do this last time? It totally worked out. I'm Spider-Man now. I'm pretty sure you wouldn't mind. ...It turns out there are a lot of us.

“And Peter -- the other one, I mean. I mean, one of the other ones. He taught me some things, and-- I wish I'd gotten to learn more from you, but he was okay." He shifts his weight. Even more ice water floods into his shoes. "He was great actually. I don't need to pretend not to like him as much as I do when he's not even here. I...really hope I get to see him again someday. ...I don't know if you would have turned out like him, but -- it would have been okay if you did. You would have been okay, I mean."

The grave is silent. Somewhere nearby there’s the sound of snowmelt dripping.

"We took care of the collider!" says Miles. "Brooklyn did _not_ get eaten by a black hole. ...Mm, mostly. Some of it still looks kinda weird. Though, now I know you're from Queens, so technically we're feuding a little and you should watch yourself." He goes for a chuckle, but it comes out kind of wet.

"And the--" He pauses, and when he speaks again his voice is less froggy. "And Kingpin is in FBI custody. And everybody else who helped him is too, or. Gone." Uncle Aaron. "...Dead." He hasn't visited Uncle Aaron's grave alone yet, but he's okay working on the mural for now.

He raises his head, blinking hard. "I wish--" His voice cuts off and he looks down, and when he looks up again his eyes aren't as tear-bright.

"Thank you, Peter."

 

_∩∩∩_

 

Peter hears her heels before anything else, click click, and then MJ is a warm weight settling against him.

"I thought you'd be here," she says.

"Am I that obvious?"

She elbows him without looking over. "No, I just know you." She reaches out and traces a finger over Gwen's name. "Hiya, Gwendy. Did Petey-o tell you his crazy story yet? Make sure he doesn't leave out the part where his alternate self was a successful blond. I guess you really _do_ have more fun."

"Hey," says Peter, with automatic faux offense. Mary Jane's bundled up in a big ochre parka over a bunch of sweaters. He thinks about how his Mary Jane owns the same smart, lush ensemble the other MJ gave her press conference in, folded up in different parts of her closet.

"He wasn't successful," Peter says. "I'm just old."

"Are you calling me old?" MJ says.

"If the shoe fits," says Peter.

MJ whaps him on the arm.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," says Peter, laughing. "No, no, you're a whole year younger than me. Clearly you walk in eternal youth."

MJ settles against him again. "Nah, it's okay," she says. "We're both old. Geriatric."

"What does that make Jonah?" asks Peter. "Commander of the skeleton war?"

"Mister Parker, was that a _meme?_ " asks MJ, faux-scandalized. "Don't make me kids-these-days at you."

"What does that even mean?"

"I'd shake my cane and accuse you of eating too many avocados."

"Ugh, I feel like _that's_ a meme," says Peter. "But I don't understand it."

"Do you not read the news?"

"The news only ever wants to yell about how terrible I am at me."

"When you extricated yourself from all our shared newspaper subscriptions -- you didn't replace them with any new ones, did you. You've basically been living in a box."

"Uh."

"I shouldn't have asked you to do that," she says. "I'm buying you an online _Times_ account if you won't log back into mine." She turns to the grave. "We're a mess without you, as you can see," she tells it.

"Always," says Peter. "But we're doing alright."

They sit there silently for a minute, leaning on each other.

MJ reaches out and lifts up Gwen's cup. "I'm stealing some of your coffee, doll. Not like you don't still owe me a thousand sips of mine." She takes a draft, the liquid cooled from being on the ground, then makes a face. "I forgot she liked mint."

"I think she might have started liking it as a preemptive defense against you paying her back for always stealing from yours."

"Get her caramel next time. We both like caramel."

 

_∩∩∩_

 

Gwen hears footsteps crunching the grass behind her and twists around, rising into a crouch in a fluid spin.

It's Mary Jane, huddled in a huge yellow coat. She's wearing her chunky-knit fingerless gloves, the oatmeal ones, and boots over leggings, like she's daring the cold to even try it.

"Thought you'd be here," she says, closing the rest of the distance so she's beside Gwen as Gwen straightens the rest of the way. At Gwen's surprised incredulous look, the other girl snorts. "What, you think I don't know you that well yet? We're friends, aren't we?"

"...Yeah," says Gwen, fighting not to look like that's as much of a revelation as it is.

MJ hooks an arm with Gwen's, beaming showily, pleased with this victory. "Well, your little _friend_ here is more observant than you give her credit for." She reaches out and boops Gwen on the nose. Gwen jumps, even though her spider sense warned her. It tickles.

MJ turns to face Peter's grave, and the grin slides off her face. The look it leaves behind is -- oddly muted. MJ is a very loud person, in Gwen's experience of her. About everything, all the time. Her outfit choices are loud. Her silent facial expressions are loud. Her singing is _really_ loud, like she's got some stuff to work out. Sometimes their practices feel like MJ and Gwen are just fighting to drown each other out. They feel _dangerous_ , like if one of them ever can't keep escalating, the other's sound will sweep her away. And then the other girls have to roar along to keep up.

Their recordings end up pretty noisy.

"I think I'd have liked to have met him," MJ says, very softly. There's nothing particular in the statement, and Gwen is suddenly aware she has no idea how to read MJ when she's not telegraphing her emotions at top volume and full saturation for the benefit all of New York.

Gwen thinks about four Peters, two married to Mary Janes. "Yeah, probably," she allows.

MJ sighs and reaches out the arm not linked with Gwen's. She rests her hand on the top of Peter's headstone, making a chain of three links. Gwen, MJ, grave.

"Hi, Peter," says MJ, her always bell-like voice chiming more mellifluously than ever. Like she's trying to charm someone new. "Thanks for taking care of this girl when I couldn't, yeah?"

Then she takes her hand away, breaking the spell, and starts to tug Gwen away by their linked arms. Gwen lets the taller girl pull her away. It would be pretty suspicious for her to stay as still as she could, even if part of her just wants to anchor herself here like a statue until sunset. Be still with him for a while.

"Come on, hun," says MJ. "That's enough gabbing with the dead. Let's gather the other girls: We can have breakfast before practice."

Gwen stumbles as they hit the path. "Wait, there's practice today? It's Thursday?"

MJ stares at her as she pauses to give Gwen a chance to get upright. "It's _Tuesday_ practice, Gwen. Man, you're bad with dates, aren't you?"

"Hey, I've been --" _Stuck in another dimension, time traveling._ "Busy with stuff."

MJ quirks one eyebrow at her, the twinkle in her eyes and the press of her half-smile telegraphing 'are you serious?' at Gwen so clearly that for a split second Gwen is sure MJ _knows_.

But Mary Jane just rolls her eyes and tugs Gwen along more insistently.

"Breakfast sounds nice," Gwen allows.

"Are you plotting to steal from my coffee again?"

Gwen hums noncommittally.

" _Gw-e-n!_ " MJ protests. "I will buy you your own coffee! I do not understand why you're always on the hunt for sips of mine!"

"Stolen food just tastes better," says Gwen. "It's science."

"You're a menace, Gwen-do-lyn," says MJ. "I know your secret identity--"

Gwen jumps.

"--as a filthy coffee thief."

"C-caught me," stutters Gwen.

" _Yeah_ I did," says MJ quietly.

"What?"

"Hm, nothing."

And Gwen lets Mary Jane pull her out of the graveyard and out toward their friends.

 

_∩∩∩_

 

Miles' spidey sense tells him someone's behind him before he hears them, and he spins around, part of him half expecting a repeat of last time he got crept up on here.

Close, but wrong Parker. It's May, picking her way carefully through the frozen slush. She looks up only after he's flinched his hands up defensively and then dropped them again.

"Oh, Miles!" she says. "I wasn't expecting you here."

She stops once she's beside him, and sighs. "I just thought, now that the crowds have mostly thinned out, it would be a good time to talk to him. Guess we both had the same idea, huh?" She looks around like she doesn't quite want to look at her nephew's grave, the twists of her head stopping when she's facing the church. "This place is so famous. It's so strange that Peter is buried here."

She finally looks down at the bedecked headstone. "I always thought me and him and Ben would all end up in the same place. But, well, Jonah was crying and -- I think it makes people feel better."

Miles remembers something Peter -- janky, old Peter -- said. "Are you guys Jewish too?"

May looks at him strangely, but must not need to ask who 'too' refers to, because she just flickers a quick shrug. "Ben was. I thought about converting when we got married, but his family was never that traditional, so I never got around to it. But that doesn't mean it wasn't important to them."

Miles reaches out and raps his fingers extra lightly on a Roman cross cropping up from the top of a headstone. He then immediately feels bad, and pats it gingerly as he says, "Then this must be _extra_ weird."

May smiles.

She puts a hand on his shoulder, thin but strong. "He'd be proud, you know."

"Yeah." Miles gives the marker one last nod as he turns to go. "I know."

**Author's Note:**

> Weird, slightly melancholy thinkpieces about things i have a lot of feelings about are my Brand, and right now what I'm having a lot of feelings about is people who are dead in some dimensions but alive in others.


End file.
